As we’ve already touched on, carbohydrates are the primary fuel source during weight training. They’re like a rocket fuel and allow you to train hard and with intensity. If you fail to get enough carbohydrates in your diet you’re going to be lacking the class A fuel required to stimulate and grow as much muscle as possible. Carbohydrates are similar to proteins in that the more muscle you carry, the more carbs you require. This to some degree is a reason why people with more muscle can eat more junk carbs without getting fat. Read that last sentence again.
Carbohydrates, when consumed, are broken down into sugar or glucose and release a hormone called insulin. Insulin has two vital roles in building muscle.
First, Insulin drives excess carbohydrates into the muscles to be stored as muscle glycogen until your body needs to use it.
Insulins second role is to drive amino acids into the muscle so more muscle can be made.
If you eat the right amount of protein but not enough carbohydrate, amino acids from protein are burned as fuel instead of being used to repair or build muscle tissue. The right amount of carbohydrates is going to produce the right amount of insulin to promote muscle glycogen storage, ideal amino acid uptake and will inhibit fat storage.
Now, let’s get into the unfortunate side of insulin and what can happen if you consume too many carbohydrates. The hormone insulin is a double edge sword. While it’s imperative that you consume enough carbohydrates for powerful/intense workouts, maximum muscle growth, enhanced formation of muscle glycogen, improved amino acid uptake in muscles and the prevention of muscle broken down for fuel, carbohydrates in excess amounts can accumulate fat storage or adipose tissue. When the muscles are tapped out with all the glycogen they can hold, the excess carbohydrates are going to be stored as body fat.
When you have consistently high insulin levels, the body increases the uptake of dietary fatty acids by fat cells which lead to an increase in body fat and can make your fat cells stubborn in “giving up“ fatty acids to be used as fuel. You gotta find that healthy median between anabolic muscle building and fat accumulation.
How to Consume Carbs
without Increasing Body Fat
1. CONSUME 5-6 SMALLER MEALS PER DAY
Every time you eat, big or small meal, you’re going to get a release of insulin. Carbohydrates just release the most insulin out of the three macros. Breaking up your meals into five or six smaller meals every 2-3 hours is going to release smaller amounts of insulin throughout the day as opposed to three large ones. This is a very important tip for endomorphs or those who have a low carb tolerance and have a hard time keeping body fat percentages low.
2. MAKE BREAKFAST THE BIGGEST MEAL
As the old expression goes “eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper.” Your metabolism is at its peak performance in the mornings. After sleeping for 8 to 10 hours (and depending on if you had a high carb dinner the night before) carbs consumed for breakfast get sent to the muscles to be stored as muscle glycogen first before going to your fat cells. Basically, A large amount of carbohydrates consumed under a near fasted state will be stored as muscle glycogen, not body fat.
3. MAKE POST WORKOUT THE SECOND LARGEST MEAL
We know that intense weight training uses a lot of glycogen. When you consume carbs immediately after an intense workout, your body releases a lot of insulin. Here’s some really good news, replenishment of glycogen and blood sugar levels from carbs must be met before any carbs can be stored as body fat.
Creating an insulin surge from a high carb meal after working out is anabolic (muscle building). High levels of insulin after training drive amino acids from protein rich foods into the muscles where they are assembled into new muscle tissue. This insulin surge also allows you to recover faster for the next work out.
Muscle fibers right after an intense workout become excitable receivers for insulin, meaning they’ll draw insulin towards them for producing growth, repair and energy replenishment preventing insulin from affecting fat storage.
Basically, All carbs consumed after a workout are fair game and are required to support anabolism and not body fat storage.
The high carb intake in the post training meal shuts down protein breakdown and suppresses levels of cortisol, the stress hormone that’s released with hard-core intense training. Without the insulin from the high carb meal, cortisol can cause muscle tissue to break down. The insulin from the carbs can keep cortisol levels in a more normal range thereby saving your hard earned muscle.
The types of carbs you consume after your workout make a difference too. Simple or fast absorbing carbs are superior to their slower digesting counterparts when it comes to rapidly replenishing muscle glycogen stores.
NOTE: If you’re somebody who’s always struggled with reducing your body fat, it would be wise to avoid high doses of carbs before going to bed. The only exception to this rule is if you have an intense weight training session late in the evening. Even if it’s 10:00 PM, you need at least some high glycemic carbs with protein after working out so that you don’t impair your recovery. Growth hormone helps mobilize fatty acids from fat stores there by decreasing body fat and growth hormone surges within the first 90 minutes of sleeping. When you combine this with avoiding carbohydrates late at night, you lower your blood sugar levels and encourage higher growth hormone output.
4. FOLLOW LOW CARB WHEN LESS ACTIVE
So we’ve covered the two most important times your body needs more high glycemic carbs. Since you’ll be less active throughout most of the day (depending on what you do for work) you need to stick with less carbs (not no carbs) and those lower in sugar. You need some insulin from carbs during inactivity so that you keep your body in an anabolic, muscle building state as long as you’re getting sufficient protein simultaneously.
5. CONSUME PROTEIN WITH EACH MEAL
Glucagon is a hormone that suppresses insulin and is released every time you consume protein. You can lower the net affect of insulin from a carb-rich meal by consuming protein. When you combine protein with carbs (example: sandwiches), your body prevents the rapid breakdown of carbohydrates into sugar which favors a leaner physique, controls insulin levels and promote steady amounts of usable energy. Meals high in carbohydrate and low in protein will release the hormone serotonin, making you feel mentally tired. To make matters worse, insufficient amounts of protein to lower the net effect of insulin will leave you feeling physically tired. It’s a double whammy.
6. EAT FIBROUS CARBS
Fibrous carbs like broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, green beans and lettuce have the potential to make insulin receptors on muscles more reactive and sensitive to insulin. The benefit here is greater insulin sensitivity on muscle which encourages glycogen formation and discourages the buildup of body fat. Of course, we all know that fibrous vegetables are packed with micro nutrients/minerals that our bodies need to function and stay healthy. Fibrous carbs also keep us feeling full so that we don’t graze throughout the day.
For the last two blog posts (Let’s talk Protein and Let’s talk Carbs), I would personally like to thank Chris Aceto for what a great job he has done in the area of health and nutrition. His book “Championship Bodybuilding” made weight training and nutrition very easy to understand and I’ve benefited the most from any book I’ve read so far on the subject. If you would like to learn more about Chris and what he does, you can check out his Instagram account at @therealtechnician